Kristen Ghodsee at The MIT Press Reader:
Twenty years ago, in November of 2005, Duke University Press published my first book: “The Red Riviera: Gender, Tourism, and Postsocialism on the Black Sea.” Produced in the wake of socialism’s global collapse and the riot of Western triumphalism that ensued, I deployed both qualitative and quantitative methods to advance a simple, but unpopular, argument: For most people in the former Soviet bloc, capitalism sucked.
By writing the “small histories” of men and women laboring in Bulgaria’s vibrant tourism industry in the decade following their country’s mad dash to embrace democracy and free markets, I explored how and why this small southeastern European country transformed from a relatively predictable, orderly, egalitarian society into a chaotic, lawless world of astonishing inequality and injustice. I wrapped my critiques of the rampant neoliberalism of the “Wild, Wild, East” in thickly descriptive accounts of the lives of chambermaids, bartenders, tour guides, cooks, waitresses, and receptionists. I wanted to show, not tell.
More here.
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